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SPOOKY EXPRESS COUNTING DOWN TO MARCH MADNESS WEEKLY EXPRESS

12) Before I go any further, I was wrong about Joe Flacco; didn't think he was that good a QB, but he found Anquan Boldin on couple of scramble situations rolling to his right. Very cool under pressure, and more mobile than you would think. It helps that they have excellent receivers, too.

11) Our man Les Miles was sitting in row in front of Harbaughs' parents; bet you he loved the fake field goal that didn't work. Actually Ravens held on next series, got ball back and scored a TD, so the fake FG would up being OK for Baltimore.

10) Phil Simms claims Colin Kaepernick would still be an NFL QB even if he couldn't run so well; if Kaepernick couldn't run, he'd be a major league pitcher. Baseball was his best sport in high school.

9) NFL has to put their best officials on these games; no way is Jerome Boger the best referee in the league-- he missed an obvious roughing passer call on the Niners and called a BS roughing the kicker penalty on the Ravens that gave the 49ers three points they didn't deserve. Give us Ed Hochuli.

Knew NFL ref Gene Steratore wasn't in New Orleans when he worked the Manhattan-Siena hoop game in Albany Friday night.

8) Last Super Bowl loser to win the Super Bowl the next season was Miami in Super Bowl VII. 49ers tied Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII for most points scored by a Super Bowl loser (31).

7) Not often a team averages 6.3 yards/rush and 10.2 yards/pass attempt and loses, but Ravens were +1 in turnovers and had that long kick return for a TD, and in today's football, that trumps most everything. 49ers gained 468 yards but lost, which makes for a long winter for their defensive coaches.

6) Small things make a big difference; Mississippi State lost 69-68 at home to LSU Saturday-- Bulldogs made only 13-27 from the foul line.

5) Rough week for DePaul, which lost pair of overtime games; better week for UConn, which won a pair of overtime tilts.

4) Phil Mickelson jogged home in the Phoenix Open, going wire-to-wire for the win. 28 of Mickelson's 41 PGA Tour wins have come Masters week or earlier in the year; 19 of 41 came in California or Arizona.

3) How bitter are the people in Cleveland to see the Ravens win another championship, while their new Browns are still spinning their wheels, and in same 12 months that Lebron James won his first NBA title? Yikes.

2) In a perfect world, where I make all the important decisions and any of the unimportant ones I feel like, Jacoby Jones would be Super Bowl MVP. Guy ran kick back 108 yards for a TD, caught a 56-yard TD pass.

Lot of lazy media people, just voting for the quarterback.

1) Its never too early to think about next season; early odds to win Super Bowl in Swamp Stadium next February: Patriots 7-1, 49ers 8-1, Broncos 8-1, Packers 10-1, Texans 14-1, Ravens 14-1.

The JimmyThe Greek embarrassment award for Super Bowl XLVII is Chris Culliver, who first made a name for himself during Super Bowl week with homophobic comments against the sweet stuff of gay teammates. During the game itself, he and Donte Whitner were huge liabilities in the San Francisco secondary. Beyond all the times he was abused on key receptions, Culliver committed a flagrant pass interference penalty on the first third down on the drive where Boldin later made his huge catch. So without Culliver’s leastiness, there might not have been Boldin’s meastiness. Have fun drafting a ton of DBs, San Francisco.

Nice goal-line playcalling by Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman. End zone fades? Those never fail! Jim is always hailed as a visionary football mind, but in the biggest moment of his career, he turned into Andy Reid. The Niners offense was shredding an ancient, exhausted defense on what could have been a go-ahead drive. And what does San Francisco do with 2:30 remaining and the Ravens on the ropes? They let the clock run down to the two-minute warming and take another timeout, thus letting the Ravens D catch its breath. They then proceed to not run the ball after killing Baltimore with the run the entire second half. Oh, and they keep trying fades with Kaepernick even though he puts absolutely no touch on the ball.

So, yeah, Jim Harbaugh can threaten to fist the refs while complaining about bad calls, but he has to know that his team also lost because he blew it at the end. Have fun fisting Chris Culliver, jackass.

11) CBS had 62 cameras at the Super Bowl? They had more cameramen than either team had players. Only 11 cameras were still running during the power outage.

10) In 2008, $92.05M was bet legally on the Giant-Patriot Super Bowl; a year later, after the economy crashed, $81.5M was wagered on the Cardinal-Steeler Super Bowl.

In a 73-minute stretch Sunday night, only 1:33 of game action took place, which helped contribute to a record $98.9M in handle, with sportsbooks making a $7.2M profit, the 21st time in last 23 years books won out.

9) During the power outage, I read that you could risk $100 on the 49ers to win SU and collect $585 if they won. That play almost hit. Think lot of people who were down on the 49ers tried to regroup with that play?

8) Mercedes-Benz pays $50M a year as the corporate sponsor of the Superdome; what percentage of that do you think they recouped in name recognition Sunday?

7) Omar Vizquel finally retired as a ballplayer; he is now a roving infield instructor with the Angels.

6) So I’m watching the Caribbean World Series after the Super Bowl Sunday night; game is tied, bottom of 9th, team A has runners on 1st and 3rd, one out, tie game, winning run is on third. Jordany Valdespin of the Mets is up, with Hanley Ramirez up next.

Genius that manages Team B walks Valdespin to get to Ramirez; you think if he did that in the major leagues he’d be fired before the game was over? So the pitcher gets Ramirez out on the first pitch, the skipper looks smarter, until the guy behind Ramirez hits a ball up the gap in right-center to end the game. Not the greatest exhibition of game strategy.

Not sure what that manager’s day job is, but hope he didn’t give it up.

5) NHL back-to-backs so far: road teams are 11-20 (4-9 if going from home-to-road, 7-11 if second night in row on road), 13-10 at home (7-3 if second night in row at home, 6-7 if road-to-home).

4) Miami is 8-0 in ACC play, very good team; last ACC club other than Duke/Carolina to start 8-0 in conference play was Ralph Sampson’s Virginia team in 1981. Miami head man Larranaga was an assistant coach with that team.

3) I’m not a big Jay Bilas fan, but credit to him on Marquette-Louisville Sunday for knowing that Louisville's AAA baseball team is called the Bats. They were showing the clip of a live bat flying around Marquette’s arena during a game last week; weird stuff.

2) You think Eldrick Woods watches golf on TV if he’s home on a Sunday afternoon? If I was a pro golfer, I'd tailor my schedule to play when there were fewer good guys playing. Money is just as green if you beat chumps.

1) I’m convinced that golf announcers are coached not to talk about the money list during broadcasts; rookie announcer Notah Begay mentioned something about an also-ran playing to earn more money this week, when NBC’s Dan Hicks quickly piped in “…and FedEx Cup points.” like you can spend those at the supermarket. We’re not stupid, we know they play for money, and a lot of money. We're OK with it, really.

12) Johan Santana made 21 starts LY; the 11th was a 134-pitch no-hitter on June 1. Here are how his starts broke down, before, after his no-hitter.

First 10s: 2-2, 2.75; most PT, 108.
Last 10s: 3-7, 8.27.

Included in his sordid second half effort was an ankle he sprained while covering first base, but hard to argue that the no-hitter did anything but reduce his ability to be an effective pitcher, especially considering they shut him down after his start on August 17.

He’s making $25M this year and next, but says he’s pitching in WBC next month. If I’m the Mets, I have a problem with that, seeing as he turns 34 on March 13.

11) Now that Jed Lowrie is gone from Houston, the entire payroll of the 2013 Astros is less than what Alex Rodriguez will make this year.

A-Rod might not even play at all until 2014.

10) Facilities impress kids and money builds new facilities. You get 92,000 people to your spring football game, you have a lot of money.

Alabama’s new football weight room cost $9M and is 34,000 square feet. That’s a lot of barbells.

9) Don't look now, but the Lakers are 5-1 in their last six games, and at same time Howard is out with an "injured shoulder". Go figure.

8) San Diego Toreros play home games in the Jenny Craig Pavilion, better known as The Slim Gym. Pretty cool name.

7) Glad to read that Dick Vitale will be calling the Final Four for ESPN International in April; as much as he has done for college basketball, Dickie V has never called a Final Four game. Now that will be corrected. Good.

6) Old Dominion is 2-20 in basketball this season, an abysmal season, but over the last eight years, they were 195-81; over last four years, 101-40.

Why did they fire coach Blaine Taylor? I mean its Old Dominion, not UCLA or Kentucky. What do they expect, never to have a bad year? Unless there is some other non-basketball reason, this seems terribly unfair.

5) Finance here at the forum came up with weird fact of the day: Last four teams to play in the Eagles’ home opener won the Super Bowl that year. Good stuff.

4) Houston Rockets made 23-40 shots behind the arc, crushing Golden State 140-109, and tying the record for most 3-pointers in an NBA game.

3) How is it that I pay for the NBA Full Court package, but late night replays of the games get blacked out of my Sports Tier, while NHL reruns don’t get blacked out, even though I didn’t buy the Center Ice package?

If I pay for NBA Full Court, I should also get all the replays of games that are shown.

2) Ohio State-Michigan was quality entertainment, an excellent game. Maybe biggest question for the better Big Dozen teams is whether they will beat each other up so much during the season that they won't have enough energy to excel in March. Its a fair question.

1) The increasingly hideous Wilpon family, who run the big market-Mets like they’re the Class A Lansing Lugnuts, now want to build a casino next to Citi Field, so they can bilk even more money out of unsuspecting New Yorkers.

It wasn’t enough to be in bed with Bernie Madoff, now they want to compete with casinos in Atlantic City and Connecticut.

If I’m running New York State, I wouldn’t give these nitwits a driver’s license, much less a gaming license, but that’s me.

Thanks for the props on the SB find - LOL....thought it was pretty cool...

I live in ODU country and this season has obviously been shocking to the fan base given the recent success - the AD said in his statement that it wasn't just a record issue so there were some character things going on that will probably come out at some point - and it's funny I was at the George Mason/ODU game with a couple of friends on Monday and we were talking about how many bad seasons Taylor had "earned" and the next day he was gone....

-- TCU 62, Kansas 55-- Horned Frogs were a 19-point home dog; Kansas scored two points in first 13:00 of game. Shocking upset. First Big 12 win for TCU, which is only in this league because of football.

-- Fresno State 64, UNLV 55-- Rebels have a bad mix of players; no one to organize everyone, get into an offense. Therefore, they struggle on road.

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